Cologne/Mannheim, 12 June 2023: After a long period of successful cooperation in many projects, PPC is now also formally becoming a member of EEBus e.V.. The symbiosis between PPC’s product portfolio and EEBUS as a protocol for applications in front and behind the grid connection point is thus further strengthened.
The cooperation between PPC and EEBUS began more than ten years ago as part of the E-Energy project and has continued over time. Since then, the digitalisation of the energy transition has been jointly pushed forward in many projects, including unIT-e² and most recently in the Bidirectional Charging project BDL (https://bdl-auswertungen.de/). The focus of these projects was the interaction between the grid, the market and applications inside the building, which PPC serves with its product portfolio in the area of Smart Meter Gateway (SMGW) and Controllable Local Systems (CLS) and for which EEBUS serves as a standardised communication protocol.
In the BDL project, for example, EEBUS was used to communicate with the energy management system (EMS) via the secure, proven infrastructure of the PPC intelligent metering system. The transmitted power limits are used to control the supply or feed-in power of the building, with the EMS independently controlling its compliance.
In this way, considerable potentials on the grid and market side can be identified and exploited through the participation of the end customer: In addition to an optimised utilisation of the grid infrastructure, which avoids or postpones cost-intensive grid expansion, it can also be achieved, depending on the optimisation goal, that generation and consumption of the end customer are better balanced with each other. In other words, energy is consumed when it is available and can therefore be purchased at a reasonable price.
In addition, a number of other use cases can be implemented via the SMGW using the EEBUS interface. One example is the billing of company cars that are charged at the home charging point at reduced company rates.
To achieve this, it is essential that charging station management, wallbox and energy management software communicate with the CLS gateway and SMGW in a standardised and interoperable way. EEBUS builds this bridge and thus optimally complements PPC’s products at the digital grid connection point. Standards ensure interoperability across different device types, giving all participants access to the digital infrastructure of the energy transition and its added values.
“The interaction between the grid and the property is one of the central switching points for the energy, transport and heat transition, the importance of which is even increasing with the rapid ramp-up of electric mobility, heat pumps, decentralised generation and local storage,” says PPC’s CTO Janosch Wagner. “With our proven product portfolio and EEBUS, we serve this interface optimally and, by joining EEBus e.V., we are consolidating the path we have already taken. Together with the other members, we can thus not only maintain the required momentum for all these topics, but even accelerate the pace further.”
